Where I use a sketch of a potentially neat board game to learn about communicating within an organization, and talk about our limits while adding another module to the problem understanding framework.
Archers, Captains, and Strategists
Talking with a colleague, I was trying to draw a distinction between the different kinds of questions people ask when looking for direction. A simple lens materialized. I hope it will be as useful for you as it has been for me.
Imagine a fun medieval-themed board game, where we all draw different cards. Based on the cards we draw, we want to know different things and want to see different parts of the overall picture. There are three archetypes: Archers, Captains, and Strategists.
When we draw the Archer card, we don’t really care about the larger picture or the depth of nuance within the situation. We just want to have clarity on what needs to be done. For Archers, the question is “Where do we shoot?” As an example, when I sign up for volunteer work, I tend to draw the Archer card. I just want to chip in, relying on others to organize me. Wash dishes? Okay. Clean tables? Sure. Stack chairs? You’ve got it. When I have the Archer card, my satisfaction comes from getting stuff done.
When we draw the Captain card, we are asked to see enough of a larger picture to make sure that all those arrows not just hit the target, but that each round of our game progresses in service of some sort of intention. Captains lead. Stepping into a TL role is like drawing a Captain card: you are given a broad mandate of some sort, and it’s on you to figure out how to organize your colleague’s collective capabilities to fulfill it. Captains ask the “What are we winning?” question. In my example of TLs, the clarity of that mandate is paramount. All their reasoning sits on top of it. If the mandate is loose, so are the winning conditions – which rarely leads to desired outcomes.
Occasionally, I get confused and, when given the Archer card, I try to act as a Captain. This can be somewhat stressful. When given a target, Captains aren’t content until they understand the problem being solved and make their own conclusion that this is indeed the right target at which to aim. And if it’s not, it can be quite draining to see everyone around me blissfully shooting arrows in what I believe is the wrong direction. I am guessing this happens to you, too?
Finally, when we draw the Strategist card, we are asked to situate all underlying intentions of Captains and Archers in the larger picture of the game. If we do indeed win, why is that significant? What happens next? What is the longer arc of this adventure? Strategists want to see it all. Strategists assume that targets will be chosen and rounds won or lost, skipping over to the effects of these moves on the larger environment. It’s the overall change in this environment that they are most interested in. Strategists discern a system of rules within the game and help Captains frame problems into mandates. The question Strategists ask is “What is the game?”
If I were to make such a game more life-like, I would employ the likes of that UNO Attack! shuffler, which tosses cards at us in handfuls. We’re always an Archer, a Captain, and a Strategist — and often, it’s hard to tell which card we’re currently holding. To add to the chaos, some of us lean toward Archer, and some Captain or Strategist, acting the archetype even if it’s different from the card we’re dealt. It’s a crazy game.
One of the many insights that this lens produced for me was that when communicating direction within an organization, it may be useful to structure it as a layering of these questions. We start with a brief answer to “Where do we shoot?”, then provide a more broad “What are we winning?” and close with the expansive “What is the game?” This way, when I am an Archer, I can quickly get my target list and go at it. When I am a Captain, I can dig a bit deeper and find clarity of my mandate. Last but not least, as a Strategist, I will appreciate the full rigor of exploring the system in which this particular direction is located.
🔗 https://glazkov.com/2022/05/14/archers-captains-and-strategists/
Limits
This story builds on the one I wrote a while ago, and adds one more leg for this stool. This third leg came as a result of examining the solution loop with the question of “What are the limits to finding a solution?”
This question has been on my mind ever since I wrote about infinity. Infinity and something very large, yet finite can be very hard to tell apart. I needed a way to make sense of that, so this additional module for problem understanding framework was born.
Looking at the edges of the loop one by one, I can see that our mental capacity is the limit for the number of possible solutions. In other words, the diversity of our mental models is limited by our capacity to hold them. The example of trying to explain calculus to a three-year old or adding yet another project to the overworked leader’s plate still works quite well here.
The limit of attachment becomes evident when we look at the rate of interesting updates to the model (aka flux). I will define attachment as our resistance to incorporate model updates. This one is a bit more tricky. When we’ve developed a model that works reasonably well, we start exerting effort to reduce outlier updates to the model to preserve the model’s stability. Often, we apply a comforting word like “noise” to these outlier signals and learn to filter them out. It is not a surprise that in doing so, we develop blindspots: places where the real signal is coming in only to be discarded as “noise”.
Limit of attachment naturally develops from having an intention. The strength of our intention influences how firmly we want to hold the “what should be” model. Some leaders have such strength of intention that it creates “reality distortion fields” around them, attracting devout followers. This can work quite well if the leader’s model of environment doesn’t need significant adjustments. However, high intention strength hides the limit of attachment. The mental model remains constant and the growing disconfirming evidence is ignored until it is too late.
The third limit is obvious and I am surprised I haven’t noticed it in retrospect. The edge between solution and outcome (what I called effectiveness) is limited by time. To understand how effective my solution is, I must invest some time to apply it and observe the outcome.
These three limits — capacity, attachment, and time – appear to interact with infinity in fascinating ways. When we say that the adversaries are evenly matched, we implicitly state that their limits are nearly the same. In such cases, the infinity asserts itself. While limits play a role, it is the drowning in recursive mental models that never reach a stable state that takes the center stage.
However, adversarial adaptation is no longer an infinity-problem if your capacity is significantly higher than mine. You can easily outwit me. Similarly, if you are able to let go of your old models with less fuss than I, you are bound to outmaneuver me. Finally, if you are just plain faster than me, you can outrun me. For you, it’s a solvable problem. I, on the other hand, will still be in the midst of an unsolvable problem.
Maybe this is why superior speed, smarts, and agility are much sought-after traits in conflicts. As an aside, capacity advantage seems to come in two forms in adversarial adaptation: both being smarter and just being more numerous. Both require the opponent to have significant mental model diversity, which pushes them against the wall of their limits. This quantity trick is something that we’ve all observed with insects. A couple of ants in the house is not a big deal, but once you see a tiny rivulet of them streaming out of a crack in the kitchen window, the problem class swings toward unsolvable.
Similarly, the presence of limits can give us an impression of facing an infinity-problem when the problem is indeed solvable, but beyond our limits to reach an effective solution. In the organization that is caught in the “reality distortion field” of their leader, continuing to push forward might seem like fighting an invisible foe (which is a marker of perceiving an adversarial adaptation), but in reality be a matter of hitting the limit of attachment. In such situations, the outside observers might classify the problem as solvable, but from inside, it will come across as unsolvable.
Put differently, limits create even more opportunities for problem class confusion. We may mischaracterize unsolvable problems as solvable – and then be surprised when the infinity shows up. We may mischaracterize solvable problems as unsolvable – and fight impossible beasts to exhaustion.
Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky have this lens of technical and adaptive challenges. To describe the distinction in terms of the problem classes, technical challenges would belong in the class of solvable problems, and adaptive challenges would situate in the unsolvable problem class. One of the key things the authors emphasize is how often the confusion of one kind of challenge with another is at the core of all leadership problems. It is my hunch that the interplay of infinity-problems and limits has a lot to do with why that happens.
Oh! Also. While you weren’t looking, I re-derived the project management triangle. If we look at the capacity, attachment, and time, we can see that they match this triangle’s corners. Time is time, of course – as in “how much time do I have?” Capacity is cost, with the question of “how much of your capacity would you like to invest?” And last but not least, attachment is scope, with the respective “how attached are you to the outcomes you desire?” This is pretty cool, right?
Interesting article! In the last figure, the question on the 'cost' corner of the triangle needs to be updated - currently it's same as the 'time' corner.